MONSTER MATCH: Kaiju Big Battel Outlasts Its Skeptics

There are some things so weird that they can draw no naysayers, only spectators. This is true of Kaiju Big Battel whose description, even at its most bare-boned, is so complex it speaks to the absurdity of trying to make something truly original in a society where there’s already so much stuff. This task has birthed the hyperrealist artist—marked by his decision not to cut through the muck but to throw it all together: Kaiju Big Battel is hyperrealist performance art.
At the Warsaw Friday night, in their fifth appearance, twenty-something art school grads dressed in home-sewn suits recalling Godzilla enemies—Mothra, et. al—and jumped into a wrestling ring decorated to mimic a miniature city. On milk crates painted with small windows, characters with names such as Dust-o Bunny and The Steampowered Boulder stomped. One character—The Slug—is impossible to defeat; In a sport where one must be knocked down to be outed, the crawling slug has no lower to fall.
It’s all a deliberate joke. But one that its actors and fans speak of in tones of amplified gravity. Between rounds, a man in a tux and a faux-hawk calling himself “MC Loud and Noxious” explained the narrative, as if there were one: Next there would be a battle between America and France, and if France were to win everyone in the audience would be forced to wear a beret for the rest of the night. A large man toting a large box marked “Berets” stalked the ring; this was an aesthetic threat—fitting for a competition which relies less on physicality than WWE (although the acrobatics of the actors are compelling), less on narrative than Medieval Times (although there is a plotline), and more on the look of the thing.
Far from resembling our best 21st century attempts at mimicking a city in miniature, the set has the slipshod production value of the sixties Japanese monster flicks that went on to enjoy a cult afterlife. Even the colors have been muted like a faded filmstock.
Conceived as a video project by Boston art school grads in the mid 1990s, the costumes and characters that have since evolved point towards the absurdity of a global, post-modern culture. Representing America was “American Beetle,” a deliberately boring lycra-fitted stand-in for a superhero. Representing France was a slice of French Toast, eyeless, with a tiny red mouth that so often froze in a dainty “O.” After a few rounds of fist pumping at the immobile rectangle, American Beetle sacked the slice, jumped on the downed man from a corner of the ring like a wrestling superstar, and, in a moment of rest, laid his head on the pillowy foam of the toast costume —appearing, from outside the ring, as if he were sleeping.
“When they first came all I knew was there would be a wrestling ring,” said Warsaw founder Mark Chroscielewski. “And then there was just a big question mark.” Now, as the crew—twenty-something hipsters in teensy T-shirts, toolbelts clipped to their Dickies pants—moved about the room making last minute adjustments, Chroscielewski seemed giddy at the prospective business. “Every year they bring a good crowd.” Outside, enduring light rain was a line of fans snaked around Driggs Avenue.
Nearly the first inside were Travis Sharp and John Gregorio, who in their free time play the roles of MCs Professor Paul Hope and Gregarious Greg Gregorio for a Brooklyn “Forgotten Champ Wrestling” league. Six years ago, Gregorio had seen a match and loved it. “It appeals on so many levels,” Gregorio said. “There’s that pushed out there Japanese culture,” he said, but there’s also something basic: “It’s a good physical contest. That’s classic.”
Sharp felt he could explain it more succinctly: “It makes no logical sense. That’s why it’s so awesome.”
A group of boys moved past them. Surely no older than ten, they pushed their way to the front of the ring. It was strange to think that these boys had entered into a world where Kaiju Big Battel had always existed. Born unto this, where could they go from here?